Order had been partially typed into computer, not completed

By Kevin Vaughn, The Denver Post

Posted:
05/02/2011 11:45:03 AM MDT

Updated:
05/02/2011 12:13:04 PM MDT

John Jensen looks over plans for the new house he is building after the Fourmile Canyon wildfire destroyed his home in Sunshine Canyon. He hopes to be finished by this summer. (Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)

About 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 6, as one of the most destructive wildfires in Colorado history churned through the canyons west of Boulder, commanders on the ground called for reinforcements.

But for three critical hours, the request for more fire engines, water tenders and four-wheel-drive wildland trucks languished, the victim of a shift change and a communications breakdown.

It wasn't until 9:30 that night that commanders struggling to gain traction against the Fourmile Canyon fire realized that the order had been partially typed into a computer system but not completed and that no one had placed the accompanying phone call needed to get the equipment on the road and headed for Colorado.

The effect of the mixup is impossible to know with certainty — a report concluded that the main effect was a delay in relieving crews and equipment already on the job.

But last year's breakdown provides a stark example of the type of tool that fire commanders and emergency- response managers try to use to improve the system: Learn from the response to past catastrophes even as they are game-planning for future ones.

"I would say on some incidents it goes really well," said Mike Chard, director of the Boulder Office of Emergency Management, of the response to wildfires and other disasters. "On others, I would say, 'not as well as last time.' "

As firefighters along Colorado's Front Range prepare for what many fear could be a devastating new season, last Labor Day's blaze west of Boulder offers the most recent laboratory to examine a system that is already being tested after a dry winter in the foothills.

A 52-page report compiled by the Boulder Office of Emergency Management examines what went right — and what went wrong — in a fire that erupted with destructive fury on a lazy Monday morning and, within hours, devoured more than 6,000 acres and leveled 169 homes.

The goal was simple — to be better prepared for the next conflagration.